Cassey GanVintage, Paint, and more....

Cassey Gan

I meddled with fashion design for a brief portion of my life. The era spanned a few years starting in the pre-teen ages and mostly consisted of rapid sketching in the form of schooltime doodles, light penciled strokes against my notebooks' lined paper, or on formal sketchpads and tracing paper as part of the curriculum for a weekend class at FIT.

There was the occasional sewing lesson. One summer, I attempted to summon my inner design prodigy and tackled a sewing machine for the first time. I succeeded in producing a rather ugly high-waisted skirt much too small for my body and a messily hemmed cardigan of sorts. I had discovered, it seemed, that I was devoid of the talent I had hoped to have.
Now, I obviously quit much too quickly. If I had persevered, it may have been a much different story, but I found little joy in the mechanisms of creating garments.

It is fascinating for me now to see exotic designs concocted independently. I deeply respect artists who are able to use their hands for the creations of haute couture masterpieces and the likes.
In a similar category, I find graduate collections of design school attendees particularly fascinating. Case in point, the London College of Fashion. The school presents a quite nifty feature that allows the humble viewer to gain insight into the entire process of creating a collection. One isn't simply admiring the clothes, but rather browsing final results and then exploring the methodology necessary to reach them.

Cassey Gan graduated from the London College of Fashion this past year with a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design Technology, a study that aims students to "understand every aspect of a garment through both the creative detail in the design and the technical skills used in production" [via London College of Fashion website]. Certainly not a lightweight task.

Gan's graduate collection highlights the exoticism of color juxtaposed with the use of avant-garde material bamboo. Creativity is favored over luxury in piling together layers of vivid hues and loose separates.

It is evident that Gan's strength is in color: unique color palettes showcase a sophisticated artistic eye.

Large camouflage prints weren't always ideally placed, and I felt as if a more fitting print could have been chosen. The prints seemed to serve little purpose, not quite adding substantial detail but not taking much away. Yet the use of color was particularly enjoyable.